'I love you' is a thing you say to people who are dying

by Quinara

It was cloudy and the girls looked exhausted. Of course, this wasn’t surprising since they’d been doing circuits, but it took Buffy a little by surprise nonetheless. With everything going on with Spike, she’d needed to work off some frustration, so she’d mostly been concentrating on burning herself out. Now was just moment when she realised that edge was never gonna blunt down.

It shouldn’t have been necessary, really. She’d been fine when she’d gone to bed, then fine again when she’d got up that morning. It was something about coming out into the afternoon sun, greeting the Potentials the way she’d greeted them yesterday. It all got her thinking about what had come afterwards, and their empty, unprepared faces bit at something inside her. It was the same place Spike’s tender hands both bit at her.

And it was frustrating, for real. It still was, even after the two-hour workout today. “I think we can call that a wrap,” Buffy said anyway, looking around at the Potential’s wiped expressions. Molly in particular looked a little green, leaning on Vi’s shoulder.

Maybe they should have finished half an hour ago.

And yet – before they all trooped inside, Kennedy took the opportunity to raise her hand. She didn’t seem so worn out.

“Yes?” Buffy said, half-remembering that she’d promised the girl something the day before. Before the groping with Spike.

“You said…” Kennedy began, like she’d been anticipating this all day. Before she finished, though, she looked around, as though she was trying to be cool. “You know,” she changed approach, sounding almost bored, “the demo?”

“Oh, right,” Buffy said as it came back to her.

Kennedy wanted to try and hit her? Fine by her…

Stepping back from the group, Buffy made space for Kennedy to step forwards. A few of the girls groaned, but none of them left, just turned to watch. At least they had discipline.

It was really was a little gloomier today. Travers and Althanea were inside, and the weather was one of the few reasons the circuits hadn’t been completely irresponsible. Nonetheless, it didn’t put Buffy in the mood for teaching. Now she’d come up with this lesson, she was happy to repeat it: she’d skip the hit and talk about what Kennedy should do, but she was also hoping Kennedy might get the lesson about challenging her authority.

“So; let’s –” Go. Obviously, Kennedy came at her before Buffy asked her to. She avoided the punch anyway, easily. “And so you see,” she began the words to explain how she’d known what was coming.

The thing was, of all of them Kennedy had been trained pretty well, so she easily moved on to the next step in the dance and came at Buffy again.

“Oh.” Naturally, Buffy avoided the hit with a handy duck, but the blow had come a little faster than she’d been expecting. Was this really what they were going to be doing today?

When the next attack came, it took a lot of restraint for Buffy to not fight back. She was in a bad mood. She wasn’t getting any, unlike Kennedy. The thing was, she didn’t actually want to hurt any of these girls, no matter how many lessons they needed to learn.

“Seriously,” Buffy said, trying to work in a few defensive moves, in the face of Kennedy’s grim determination. She put her leg out in the hope that the girl would trip herself up on it, but fifteen years at the Watcher’s Council didn’t actually mean defeat by an opponent who wasn’t fighting back. “Do you have a point that you’re making here?” Buffy asked, annoyed.

Kennedy just came at her, again and again, not breaking her concentration or her flow. Part of Buffy was a little impressed, but she was also trying to work out how she’d explain to Willow that her girlfriend had a broken rib.

Thankfully, the other Potentials soon had had enough of this as well. On the edge of Buffy’s awareness, they were shouting at their friend to stop.

“Come on, Ken!” one of them complained. Buffy wasn’t sure who.

“You don’t have to prove anything!” another cried out. It might have been Vi.

Molly groaned, like she really did want to throw up.

“You’re not gonna hit her.” That was Rona.

Eventually, of course, Kennedy gave up. But it wasn’t without a wounded cry of frustration, which haunted Buffy for the last few steps she was turning away. “Would it be so hard?” Kennedy shouted. When Buffy turned back, the girl had tears in her eyes.

“So hard to do what?” Buffy shouted back, just as loud. Her heart was racing, and her bad mood was worse.

Kennedy set her jaw, and her fury looked hard inside her. “Would it be so hard,” she asked again, “to teach us what it feels like not to be weak?” She looked at Buffy like it was a curse, the power that she had. “All this stuff is useless,” she continued, throwing a hand around at the work-out kit on the lawn. “You want to give us something useful? Show us what it feels like to beat you.”

She didn’t know what she was asking. Looking at Kennedy and her weak stance on the lawn, the sort of stance Buffy had to school herself into when she was standing in the real world, Buffy knew that Kennedy couldn’t know what she was asking for.

All the same, Buffy really wasn’t in a mood to take it. “You wanna hit me?” she demanded, stalking right back up into the girl’s space. “Hit me,” she said, holding her arms out wide. “Go on. See if it makes you feel better.”

For a moment, Kennedy looked at her. Her eyes were wet. Then, with a snarl of frustration, she balled up her fist and punched Buffy straight in her stomach.

Buffy took it, the blow and the pain, the way she’d taken a hundred thousand hits before. Staring Kennedy down, she asked her again, “How d’you feel?”

Right then, as Kennedy looked away, Buffy saw it: the fear that all the Potentials had of her. It was right there in Kennedy’s scowl. All of it made sense now, Buffy figured – every piece. It wasn’t about them and their own pain, not really. It was the Slayer’s way to be better than anything else alive. They wouldn’t be happy about their own power until she fell at their feet.

None of them realised the truly terrifying part, of course. She was almost willing to do it.

“Buffy!” Lydia was calling over to her, looking perplexed with Nigel by her side. Buffy waved them all off as she charged inside.

There was a crowd in the kitchen by the time Buffy had taken a shower, and people kept talking to her. Anya, mostly, was going on about something, but it didn’t matter because Buffy was hungry. She ate half a bag of Cheetos and a full plate of dinner, in love with the full-blooded risotto and sick of being bound in her body’s self-denial.

Spike came upstairs for blood and they flirted by the microwave. Mostly, Buffy wasn’t sure what he was saying because she was too occupied staring at his mouth. He caught her, started acting jumpy, but in the end it wasn’t possible to resolve the situation before Giles was calling on her to look at patrolling routes. Because, obviously, one day they would actually take the girls on patrol.

She told Spike, “Later,” because she wanted him to know. He looked at her like he didn’t believe it.

In the end, when Buffy was done arguing with Giles about whether Gentle Pines was still an active cemetery, she had indigestion. Her Watcher left for Xander’s apartment, because he liked to alternate when he was here, keep an eye on things like the nosy boss of them he was. After that, the indigestion resolved into a straight-out energy slump, and she was sat in the dining room with her elbow on the table and her face resting on her fist, thinking about being hit.

That was where Willow found her. Buffy had almost forgotten she had friends who existed, so it was almost difficult to know what to say. Looking at Willow’s face was like looking into the past seven years.

She hovered in the doorway when Buffy looked up, an uncertain smile on her face and a steaming floral mug in her hands. “Oh, hey,” she said, like this had been an accident. “You want coffee? I just made some.”

You had to be fair to her. If there was one thing that sounded good right then, it was coffee. “Sure,” Buffy replied, easing herself to her feet. God, coffee.

“Oh, you don’t have to move,” Willow said quickly, stepping a step forward. “Take this,” she added, holding out her own mug. “I’ll get another.”

Buffy took the mug, thanking her. “I’m gonna go sit on the couch, though,” she explained, nodding to the living room. “Wooden chairs make this Buffy’s bones go creaky.” Case in point, there was a hink in her lower back already.

“OK,” Willow agreed, accepting the invitation a little too eagerly for someone who didn’t have anything to say.

Sure enough, even as Willow got her own coffee and came to sit opposite Buffy on the couch, her question was to the point. “So,” she asked, “how was training today?”

Buffy examined the look on her friend’s face. She almost sighed – of course this was going to be about training, because everything was in the end, wasn’t it? “Fine,” she said anyway, with a shrug. Buffy didn’t like taking bait. “How was your afternoon?”

“Good,” Willow replied eagerly. “Good.” She took a sip of her coffee and swallowed. After another moment’s pause, then, she glanced away and tried to sound casual. “There was something I wanted to ask you about, actually, ‘cause Lydia said something and then…” She stopped, waited, breathed and asked straight out, “What happened with Kennedy?”

As their eyes met, Buffy wondered what Willow already knew. It wasn’t a thing, was it? She didn’t want to make it a thing. “Can’t you ask her?” she tried, the sigh half escaping her.

“I did,” Willow replied, sounding frustrated. “She said you sparred,” she added, like she didn’t believe that at all. “But I don’t…”

All Buffy was left looking at then was a frown. She sipped her coffee, but didn’t interrupt.

“I don’t know, you know?” Willow said, glancing Buffy’s way. “We have all these good things going on, but then she gets mad, and then I feel like I’m stuck in the middle, and I just…” She shook her head.

Even as she was sitting there, curled up on the couch like a girlfiend, with a coffee and a crazy day, Buffy didn’t know what to say. She didn’t have any relationship advice worth keeping and Spike let her get away with murder, including that time when he did. “You shouldn’t feel stuck in the middle,” she tried all the same, because that part at least was about her. Willow glanced up. “I’m not here to get in your way.”

“But you’re my friend,” then Willow replied, smiling like it couldn’t be helped. “And,” she added, more seriously, “you’re in charge of us.”

That made Buffy laugh, for reasons she didn’t want to think about. She held out her coffee so it wouldn’t spill, adjusting her legs. “But, Will,” she said, “you hate authority figures.”

“Nuh-uh!” Willow refused, distracted for a moment. It was a good look on her. “Teacher’s pet since 1981 – and proud of it!”

“OK, fine,” Buffy accepted, rolling her eyes. “You love them and resent them.” Neither of them needed to bring up the reason The Magic Box had seen a turnover of approximately zero dollars this last quarter – and the one before that.

“That’s…” Willow scowled, comically. “That’s not what we’re talking about, OK, missy? I just…” In seconds, the distraction was over again. “I wanna know if it’s all gonna be worth it, you know?”

Buffy did know. Also, she thought as she slurped some more coffee, she missed having jokes. There was never enough time. “It’s gonna be fine,” she said eventually, putting as much belief into the words as possible. It had to be fine. She tried to figure out if there was doubt in Willow’s eyes. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

More than anything, Willow looked shifty. She dodged the question, changing the subject. “I never asked you if you were OK,” she said, with jitters. “After Spike and the…” she waved a finger at her own neck; Buffy was wearing a sweater, so you couldn’t see her scabs. “I should’ve asked days ago, but I’m such a…”

“Will,” Buffy interrupted, frowning, because it didn’t matter.

“I so wanted this to be my second chance,” Willow continued, sounding a little scattered. She was still looking down. “I wanted to come back to Sunnydale and make it work, with you guys and with magic, and… Here you guys are, you and – and Spike and Xander and Anya and I’m… I’m all left behind again.”

“You’re not…” Buffy began.

Willow looked up. “I know I’m letting you down,” she said like it was true, “with the spells and stuff – and Ken says I shouldn’t care, but I do. And she won’t understand, which is this whole other…”

“Will, just breathe, OK?” Buffy said firmly, because sometimes she was in charge of them.

Looking guilty, Willow glanced back her way. She held her mug close to her mouth, almost as if to protect her, and it was all ridiculous because Buffy knew she was strong. Maybe it was something about Althanea being here; maybe it was something else, but it didn’t really make too much sense. Where was all this stuff coming from?

“I don’t want to put it all on you,” was what Willow said, after a moment. Her expression was pleading, like it was Buffy’s job not to let her. “I know we all…”

“It’s fine,” Buffy replied, resolutely. She smiled, the coffee cup warm in her hands. She rested it on her knees. If this was what this was about, in the end, then it really was all fine. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You shouldn’t have to take it, Buffy,” Willow said, like the concern had been riding her for weeks. “Not from all of us. Nobody’s strong enough to do that,” she insisted. “Not even you.”

“Really, it’s not a thing,” Buffy repeated herself. At the end of it all she was serious. Even that someone acknowledged what it meant, that was what made it worthwhile. And that was enough. It was. “I don’t have to be.”

--the next time--

When the First Slayer wanted her to, Buffy could fall asleep in an instant. Tonight it didn’t take long. She and Spike had barely got settled, after she’d recovered the lost pillow and Spike had dug out their new fuzzy blanket. He was still all noodly from his blow job, so Buffy had snuggled in close. Her nose itched once; she rolled over twice, to her back and then to make Spike spoon her – and Sineya was there, sat against the wall opposite the bed like a perve.

“Uh, excuse me,” Buffy addressed her, looking down to check there were arms in the way of her boobs. Just about, from what she could see, though Spike’s had her all pushed up and cleavagey. “Kind of semi-naked here.”

“It’s time,” the Slayer said gruffly, shaking her dreads.

And it was.

“What do you mean, it’s time?” This was a dream, though, so somehow Buffy didn’t know even as she did exactly. Somewhere other than the chest that currently looked quite sexy, her heart sank. She’d thought there would be more opportunities, more chances, more… “Time for what?” her dream self asked, naïvely.

“It’s time,” the Slayer would only repeat, her eyes locked on Buffy’s. Realisation crept between worlds.

No, all of her thought, looking back to Spike where he was sleeping, solid behind her. He wouldn’t wake up – of course he wouldn’t. No, she thought again, even though she knew it was time to go. His hold was weak around her. When she let go of his arm Buffy knew the limb would drop away, leaving her exposed.

She was ready to do this for him, of course, for all of them. She had been since the night before.

That moment would have been the end of it, Buffy was certain, but as she looked back to the basement she remembered the other thing.

The First Slayer was there still, waiting.

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” Buffy told her hesitantly, before she lost the opportunity to say that too. “About what happened to you,” she clarified, meeting Sineya’s eyes. The girl looked confused. “They had no right, those men,” Buffy explained. “To take you and make you suffer for them.”

That was the thing, wasn’t it? Because Buffy really was sorry. The calling of the Slayer, it was one of sacrifice and self-denial. She had made her peace with that, come to embrace it as something she’d chosen. The only thing that had been forced upon her, in the end, were superpowers and a kickass metabolism. Now it was just time to gain a couple more.

Sineya, though, with her white paint and her rage, she was the very first one. She had been chosen into this life in a way that was all the more brutal and all the more unbearable.

It was the same thing Buffy herself had been saying for weeks, yet the gulf between them seemed much greater than the width of the basement floor. The Slayer was crouching the dark, the way she always crouched in the dark – on her own. Buffy, on the other hand, was lying in bed with Spike’s arm and a blanket around her. The cushions Spike had found to bulk out the mattress were thin and lumpy, but they were better than the concrete.

She didn’t really get it, but eventually Buffy took Sineya’s point and nodded, with respect.

“You know what’s to come,” the First Slayer finished.

And when she woke up, Buffy did.

It seemed fitting, somehow, to wear the nightgown again, from the night before. Slipped from Spike’s arms tonight, Buffy found it hidden in a box of his stuff, right at the bottom as though he didn’t want anyone to see it, including either of them. Of course, it was freshly laundered, because Spike didn’t leave anything unlaundered these days, so when Buffy held it to her nose it smelled of lilies and linen and ozone.

Where she was holding it, the hanging folds of white kept tickling at her breasts, so Buffy stood up and pulled the thing over her head. It didn’t itch quite so much this time. Carefully, she redid all the buttons, adjusting so that every seam was aligned with her body – then she did the bow at the back.

With her loose hair and ponytail freed from the collar of the dress, Buffy scraped fingers around her face and brought all that back into order too. All her loose hair was yanked back into the band; the debauched kink her pony had taken to one side was straightened to sit aligned with her spine and with her nose where follicles pulled at her forehead.

At last she tied the collar. Still in jeans and socks, it was easy for Buffy to then tear the skirt of the nightdress from a little below the bodice. It left her virginal once more, with a gathered and flaring top, then at least a practical lower half. She’d grab her boots on the way out – her jacket to hide the torn hem – but this part of the outfit would at least remind her of the mission, as she came undone once more.

It would have surprised her a lot if Spike hadn’t had some notepaper and a pen among his things, but tonight there were no surprises. The note Buffy wrote wasn’t long.

Looking at it when she was finished, Buffy wondered if there were more words to say, but she didn’t say them. Tearing the note from where it was bound, she threw the brown leather notebook back amongst Spike’s stuff and crossed the short distance back to the bed.

“Hey,” she whispered, dropping to her knees by the bedside. Spike was out for the count, nestled in all the soft things he had found for them – face down, his nose was smooshed into the pillow and one hand was spread on the sheet here Buffy had lain moments before. “Spike, it’s me,” she whispered again, running fingers through his hair, along the paths she’d made earlier. “You’ve gotta wake up – just for a minute.”

He mumbled something that made no sense, but his searching hand moved from the bed to rest on her wrist. Buffy leaned in as he rolled over, cradling his face now and kissing him for a final time, smooshing his nose where it was supposed to be smooshed against hers. It was clear that Spike wasn’t entirely awake – the grip he had on her was weak; his mouth against hers was slightly too soft and slightly too slow – but Buffy hoped at least that he was there in the moment with her.

He was all of inches away. “Buffy,” he came back with, barely moving his lips.

“Spike,” Buffy addressed him, glad that he couldn’t see her face. She swallowed as he smiled. “I’m sorry it’s so soon.” This was… This was really hard. It wasn’t supposed to be so soon.

“Buffy?” Spike mumbled again, frowning slightly.

It took a second to find her strength, then – “Tell me you love me?”

Caught up in this dream they were sharing, Spike sighed, a rush of air running through him and out through his nose, like frustration. Nonetheless he murmured back, his hand warm on her elbow, “I love you.” You stupid cow.

The words pricked Buffy’s eyes with tears. Thank you.

There was a smirk on Spike’s lips, almost like he’d heard. Almost like he knew. Yet he was drifting off again – that was clear. His hold on her began to weaken.

“One day,” Buffy promised, smiling back no matter what it meant. Spike’s hold on her was practically gone. It wasn’t clear how much of her he could hear or what he would remember. Even she almost couldn’t hear her own words. Yet she promised him anyway, “I’ll tell you.”

As she said it, Buffy became sure Spike had gone. It didn’t matter anymore, though, so she pressed one last for-the-last-time kiss to the side of his nose and let him find his rest.

It took a moment, but then Buffy was pulling back, taking Spike’s hand between the two of hers to press the note into his palm and curl his fingers around it into a fist. That fist she tucked close to his body, right up near his chin and his chest and his other shoulder, near the comfort of his pillow.

It would come down during the night, but all the same Buffy pulled the blanket up, hiding Spike’s torso from view. She was hoping he would wake before morning – the whole plan rested on him waking before morning – and she wanted the first thing for him to notice to be what she’d done for him.

When the moment came to regain her feet, Buffy hesitated for real, not sure what she wanted the last thing to be that she would do or say. “Bye,” was what she said, but it wasn’t really enough. None of it was.

She left to find the dragon.

--then--

When Buffy looked at herself in the mirror, what she saw was a lonely warrior, too much in control and a threat to everyone around her. They said they put things on her, demanded things from her, but it wasn’t really true. This person, she had nothing to give. She was too well protected.

That was how Buffy wanted to appear, for the most part. It allowed her to do her job, as Spike would say. It allowed her to be the Slayer. The problem was, written in the Slayer was her every memory of heartache, every shield and layer of leather and bronze she had spun around herself to free her from the mortal requirements of pain.

Dragging the make-up wipe from her box on the dressing table, Buffy tried to see herself differently. She tried to imagine what it would mean to be someone who could be defeated, taken in battle. Taken wherever. She dragged the white, stinging wipe of alcohol and oil across her face, so that with it every stain of bronzer, pink-honey slip of lip gloss and foundation smoothed away from her face. The black stains on her eyes, she scrubbed them away, more dark black-gold shadow and mascara she had never used to put on so thickly.

It was there in her hand soon after, all her hopes for herself. Her fingers shook as she threw the wipe in the waste basket.

Back to her mission, then, Buffy examined herself again. It was a little better, really, but she was still all too much metal. If there was anything anyone needed from her, it wasn’t sharpness. Willow hadn’t wanted sharpness, and Spike…

Bringing her hands to her ears, Buffy began the task her earrings from their lobes, every one. When she was fifteen, she figured she’d get a piercing for every big battle she survived, to remind her – but after six months there had already been too many for her to stay fashionable. She laid – what was it? Ten? – earrings down on the table, setting them in pairs like she had her shuriken back when the Magic Box had had its training room. Her ears felt light when she was done, the holes in them vulnerable.

It didn’t help when Buffy pulled her hair down, unbraiding every plait until it hung with no more style than how it was cut. These days, that wasn’t so much, at least when she swept her bangs to the side.

It would be easy, Buffy figured, to keep going like she’d been going, to win out this fight the way she’d won out every other. Maybe she still would. This thing with Spike, though; this thing with the girls; this thing with Willow and with the Watchers and with Giles – she wasn’t sure she wanted to do it anymore. Not this way.

There wasn’t anything she could do, she decided, about the set of her mouth. All of this, the external stuff, it was what Buffy did to herself every day. The underneath parts of her with full of everything that had been done. As she stood up, she thought she could feel it, every scar that made her something less than perfectly good, perfectly innocent in the battle against evil she somehow still found herself fighting.

Yet, as she slipped out of her clothes, there was a body underneath her after all. It was short like it always had been, thin not quite like it ever really was. If you believed her mother’s romance novels, there wasn’t much to tell the world she was a woman. Her chest was flatter than it had been with her a teenager; her waist didn’t do so much to divert from the path between her ribs and her hips. Without her clothes, she had the body of a gymnast. One of the child ones. Without her underwear, she looked older, but still like she was no good for anything adult.

This was what made it weird, Buffy thought, that she’d ever been a sexual aggressor. She didn’t look like any of the hot chicks in the movies. She didn’t look like any of the warrior chicks either. She figured she could be the victim quite happily, like the ditzy cheerleader or…

Rooting through her wardrobe, Buffy tried to find something that made sense. There wasn’t anything. There never was. She moved over to her drawers, feeling the night air on her skin and the hanging lengths of her hair around her face as the wood juddered in its runs.

Then, right at the back of the drawer of sweaters she never wore, Buffy found it. An old, maybe fifteenth – maybe sixteenth birthday present from her Aunt Darlene.

Now, Aunt Darlene had never had any teenage children, so she’d never quite figured how sixteen wasn’t just four years gone from twelve. Also probably because that was about the time she’d refused to shut up about Pride and Prejudice on A&E, she’d figured what Buffy had really wanted for her birthday was a full-length empire-line nightie, with lace around the top of the arms and a bow at the collar. In white.

Needless to say, it had never been worn. By sixteen, Buffy had had two rules for dresses like this. Either they had to show off her legs, pretty much going short enough that she had to take shallow steps on stairways so as not to show off her crotch – not that she really minded the odd flash; it was better than looking like a pre-schooler – or they had to come down her chest far enough that anyone looking would be too embarrassed to notice she was still a double-A.

She’d dressed as a slut, basically, but kept everyone at arms’ length. These days, of course, it was all about the comfy slacks and necking. Yet, nonetheless, Buffy thought she played harder to get. With emphasis on the difficult.

What would it look like, Buffy wondered, to make herself the girl she’d never been? One of those cry-babies from a novel? A vampire novel?

Pulling the nightdress from the drawer, Buffy walked back to her full-length mirror. She looked at herself with the belief, if nothing else, that she had banished every ounce of self-loathing, so it was all fairly easy to get dressed. OK, it was difficult to find her way through every fold of white, so for a moment too long she was lost looking at herself, the fat on the inside of her legs. Still, she found her way eventually.

Then, however, she was dressed as a meringue. The gown was on her shoulders, her head free from its neck, and parts were caught on her chest so it was still cutting just above her knees. It looked – awful.

With an irrational burst of disgust and that incandescent rage only a bad outfit could bring, Buffy straightened the dress, dragging the band of the bodice tight across the pebbled nipples of her breasts. She breathed heavily, her face red as she suppressed the urge to destroy herself, yanking on seams and looking away from the mirror.

There was a bow at the back she should have undone, Buffy realised, a ribbon which ran through corset lacing. There were more bows than she’d realised: the one at the collar, woven into lace and scalloping ruffles; this corset bow at the back – and then two at the tops of her thighs, marking the crease where her legs turned into crotch and guarding pleats of material in case she didn’t think there was enough.

Ruffles of lace and broderie anglaise ran in vertical lines up and down the bodice, the seams of them scratching at her. There were buttons up the front, like there were up the back, and an invisible keyhole about three inches long that gave the collar bow something to keep together. She turned around and Buffy found yet another tie at the back, opening up yet another pleat of white material just underneath her ass-crack.

Maybe it had always been too small, but otherwise Buffy’s ribcage had definitely filled out in the last seven years. She looked disgusting; she looked…

She was a fetish. There were no other words for it. She bore no resemblance to the girl who had walked into this room ten minutes ago and as she calmed down, became used to the nightdress’s ungrateful approach to her chest, she realised it didn’t actually make her look unfeminine.

Good god, Buffy realised, in a flash of recognition. She looked like Drusilla after Prague.

She hated her herself like this, Buffy decided as she looked back into the mirror. She looked ready to be seduced, desperate for any glimpse of smut. It was uncanny and went against everything she was. So it had been with Dru, of course.

Needs must when the devil drives.

That was the thing, wasn’t it? She wanted the devil and she definitely wanted some driving. Maybe a few bows were a small price to pay, to lose herself.